


Imaginary Bridges

by typhe



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: LHM, M/M, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 09:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typhe/pseuds/typhe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vanyel asks after Stefen's family for the first time, and Stefen is quite without a lie ready to tell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Imaginary Bridges

It takes what feels like several minutes for Vanyel to open the door; he looks pale and puffy-eyed, and I realise he probably fell asleep waiting for me to make good on his evening invitation. I open my mouth to apologise but he smiles at the sight of me - not much, just a minuscule curl at the edge of his lips, but that's much more than I usually see anyone get out of him and I suddenly couldn't politely leave if I wanted to. "Shavri finally let you go?" he asks, surprisingly sympathetic.

I set my gittern down delicately, and throw myself into the nearest chair. "Finally!" That sounded a little over-shrill, and I frown at myself; nothing worse than missing a note. "Not that I should complain at _you_." He shrugs, well aware that other Palace functionaries regard his daily schedule as some kind of drawn-out torture. "And think, I was hoping for a chance to write something new to play at Midsummerfest," I groan. "I can't imagine when I'd get the time to even _start_ composing anything right now."

"I wouldn't give up on that just yet," he mulls. He does seem more content than often, and I wonder what grand deeds of diplomacy I enabled today. "We're still clearing a backlog of delayed procedural business - it could ease up in another month or so."

"Want to bet on that?"

He snorts. "Well, no." Of course not. No one at the Palace has any intention of ceasing to wear me down to the bone, and any easing of my current duties will only become an opening for them to throw more work at me. "I admit, if you do pull it off I'll feel a little left out," he adds cryptically.

"Huh?"

"I've a suspicion I won't be here over Midsummer, and I would hate to miss a chance to hear you début something for the festival."

"Haven't you heard enough of my caterwauling yet?" He shakes his head, smiling at me again, and I eat up his silent and intoxicating flattery. He likes my music, and I have been clinging tight to that assurance as I fall asleep alone every night. He likes my music. He even really liked two of my songs before he met me, though he'd both failed to attach my name to them and _unaccountably_ failed to realise that they were shoddy apprentice work and I can do _much_ better now. He likes my music and I'm not sure what that says about his taste or discrimination but I'm honestly relieved because if he hated it I'd probably do something stupid like start paying attention to his musical preferences. As if I'm not doing that already. As if I'm not constantly trying to milk inspiration from his eyes and praise from his voice. "So whatever could it be that tempts your ears away from me?" Because he better have a good excuse for this.

He looks _extremely_ longsuffering. "Going by my usual luck, I expect to receive an invitation home to see my parents."

I frown, too tired to pretend that Medren has never let slip on the topic of Vanyel's famous visits home. "Well, uh, if you really can't say no -"

"Did that last year," he replies flatly. "Delaying the day of reckoning overmuch tends to upset Mother, and Father says I don't want to upset Mother." I'm also too tired to pretend that I truly understand, and he sees it. "What, are your parents never that overbearing?"

Um.

He's caught me unprepared. I should have known, considering everything else we've talked about in the last few weeks, that he'd ask after my family eventually and here I am without a lie ready to tell. I quickly run through all the ones I've tried in the past - would he welcome a lost prince of Ceejay, wrongly thought bastard and exiled due to the colour of his hair, or a circus runaway raised by tigers, or a Changechild that the fae left in an empty crib on Sovvan-night, or the last descendent of the Baron of the Eastern Reaches?

Every option seems equally silly and I'm forced to conclude that, not least as he's a Herald, nothing's going to save me from the truth. "I, uh, don't have parents. I was a foundling, if you can call it that."

"Oh - I'm sorry, that was foolish of me. I shouldn't have assumed..."

There's that pity in his eyes that I always loathe seeing, and I shrug lightly. "No, you weren't to know. I really don't mind." No, what I'll mind is the end of these glorious few weeks of him looking at me as if I were his social equal; I always miss that when it's over.

"If that's so, then may I ask - why _wouldn't_ you call it that?" 

I try to hide my surprise. _That_ was a fast recovery. He's not always tactful and politic, is he? Sometimes he's curious.

About me.

Really _me_ , not just someone I made up off the cuff to perform as until I got bored of it.

Well then. I've already broken with habit, and now I feel a reckless urge to tell him as much of the truth as I can stand - what's the harm? He's already pitying me, and it's not like we're sleeping together, is it? Bitter thought, smells like burning bridges, but it's pertinent; if he's not sleeping with me it doesn't matter if he doesn't sleep with people like me.

But I don't talk to people I'm sleeping with the way I talk to him.

I take a deep breath. "I don't remember anything about my family. I grew up living with an old beggarwoman, but she wasn't related to me. She never said how she came by me, either, which I think was telling..." He frowns, and I can almost see his logical mind playing that out; there's no pretty ending there. "Put it like this, if she'd rescued me from a house on fire, she would have preened about it and held it over me on a daily basis. She always got angry when I asked - you know, put on a show of how wounded she was that I was even mentioning it, and gods forbid I ask anyone else. Whatever really happened, it couldn't have been to her favour." He nods slowly, seeing the grim sense of it. There's no human misery that surprises him. "She used me to get by - I begged and busked, she took my money, and sometimes there was a roof over our heads. So I suppose I was a foundling, and I was most assuredly found, but not by the best of company. Her name was Berte," I add impulsively. I've barely thought of her in years. I wonder what happened to her - nothing good, I hope. The detail doesn't matter, but I've never given up her name even to Medren, and suddenly it was easy to say.

No amount of detail could make it into a story - it's just a tawdry and banal explanation for why there is no story, but the curiosity's still there - and behind it, another unneeded apology. "I really should think before I complain, then. At least I _have_ two parents still living, and they sometimes even mean well."

People always say that, too. I wish he knew that it wasn't about having or not having; I don't even know what having would have been like. I'm always daubing over that gap in my own origins, my imagined history becoming ever more colourful. At the same time, I've wondered on it for real, and it's never comforting. "I might too, for all I know. But I hope not, because if I did I'd have to wonder why they...well, that's how it is. I'll never know. I've made things up about my parents, sometimes," I admit. "Only so I'd have something to tell someone, or something to believe about myself for a moment." I hang my head, a little ashamed of my whimsies for all they're as much a part of me as the mystery itself is. "I know it's silly. But I've always done it, even when I was a child. I felt like when I sang, I could be anyone I wanted to be...still do, sometimes. I can always pretend for a few minutes that I wasn't unwanted -"

"You're not unwanted."

I look up and find him with his hand to his face as if the words had slipped out of him without his intention. "Van?" I query, softly, barely daring to wonder what he means.

"You're not," and his eyes meet mine, overtaken by a burst of emotion too sudden to recognise. "You -" It's like he's struggling to catch the words that he's let slip and drag them behind his perfect façade again, _oh what are you saying to me?_ \- and then the feeling flickers out and he's abruptly, tragically in control again. "Of course you're wanted. You have a _unique_ Gift, Stefen. Everyone - Shavri, Randi, everyone who ever needs to work with Randi - we all need you. And you're doing so much else for us, you're a, a great friend -" I sigh, not even trying to hide my disappointment at his neutered words, only hoping that he might misattribute the cause, and I can see something not so unlike _pain_ threatening to break free from his confines, as if this stupid game is making him ache as much as I do. "Stef, I -"

_I'll believe it if you ever look at me that way again and not run from it._

I watch him struggle to fit his words through the mask he wears. "- I'm...really glad I met you."

"Thanks," I say limply.

It hurts more to know that it's _true_. He really is. Why isn't there _more_? Why is that all I get? Why couldn't he just say that _he wants me_? Why can't I quit needing more of him than I have?

I'm going mad, I swear, and I'm making a nuisance of myself by whining at him in the meantime. I'm no good at moody. I'd sooner try flippant and provocative. "Really, I'm sorry I've no advice for you," I say like it doesn't matter at all. "Not something I know how to handle, parents. I don't get why it can't just be simpler, though - why do you go back there at all?"

His lips curl awkwardly. He needed a subject change, and there I went and chased him into something personal; can't say that displeases me. He finds words for it, and doesn't appear to mind saying them. "Duty, really - nothing they've done is so bad that I have the right to cut them off entirely. I even think it's been getting better since Father Leren was killed - I don't know if Medren ever told you about that?"

"A bit," I say casually. I'd love to hear his take on the whole story sometime, but I'm not in the mood for it.

"Well, after keeping up visits all this time without bringing debauchery down upon their door, maybe I've finally made some progress with them." He shrugs. "Call me optimistic, but I do look back and see many ways it's not as bad as it was."

"Has anyone ever called you optimistic?"

He smiles ruefully. "I don't recall it. The gods know it's taken them long enough to show signs of accepting me."

"I suppose I should be glad I never had to worry about anything like that. Dodged a few traps there." Wonder if he'll take a damn hint about my sexual inclinations this time. "For some reason, I never played pretend about all the downsides to having a family."

He sighs. "Stef, I can hardly fault you on that, can I? The truth is - well, I look nothing like Father and barely like Mother. I'm told I take after Treesa's mother, who died long before I was born. But I wasn't the happiest child, so...I used to make things up too."

"You did? Like what?"

He looks embarrassed, and oddly vulnerable. "You're within your rights to laugh at me for this if you want to. Sometimes I told myself they weren't my parents and it was all some kind of horrible misunderstanding. I...pretended I was a foundling."

I can't laugh, only gape a little at the irony. "That's..."

"I know, _very_ foolish."

"No," and I feel like I'm looking into an old shadow that's seeing light for the first time in decades, and it's shrinking from the candle of my voice. "It's what everyone does. Will yourself away from whatever's hurting." That's how it _works_ , you don't push them, you lead people willingly away from their pain. Singing only opens the door. "It doesn't have to make sense, does it? Just so long as it made you feel better."

"I suppose," and he spares me an honest, awkward smile that completely dismisses any mockery I even could have made of him; _did you get cold under those imaginary bridges?_ "There's still no dodging the reality, though."

Reality is all very well for people who have one, and a tantalising mirage for those of us who don't. "If they invite you, stall," I suggest, my tone entirely unserious. "You're the one with the power to withhold what they want. Leave them hanging until they make you a better offer."

He laughs. "You would make a vicious negotiator. If you could ever broker a treaty between me and my family, I should grant you a diplomat's pass. It's usually me having to patch up their feuds, and then there's no one to mediate when it's my turn."

I smile lazily. "Well, you could treat it like haggling with a new patron. You should at least wait a few days before replying to anything they send you. Make yourself look busy. Then they'll have to accept your terms." He nods, clearly tired of even contemplating the topic; I want to stop making a joke of it and reach out, to sing until the pain's gone, to _care_ in that heady, excessive way he keeps on calling from me - I really am losing my mind here.

"I still feel like a fool, you know?" He registers my questioning expression. "For not having known about your family. I feel like I should have realised, after knowing you all this time -"

"'All this time'?" I query, too incredulous at that statement to keep my mouth shut.

"Well, it's been -" 

He breaks off, and I can almost feel him tracing back through frenetic recent days. I'm a little proud; it seems like much more happens around the Palace now, quite apart from all the Audiences I play at - it's like I released some kind of pent-up wave of suppressed activity. But he's still being absurd. "Van," I hazard, amid his silent counting. "We've known each other for, what, all of three weeks?"

His eyes meet mine; dazed enough to let slip another of those piercing moments, and my words suddenly sound wrong even to me. "Is that really all?" Yes, of course it's all. How could it be all? No, we've just spent a lot of time together. No, no, it's because I keep thinking of him and I've thought of him for years and now my brain's an addled tangle of make-believe and real and I can't find the ends of any of the strings any more and they're weaving together even as they're coming apart, even as I'm learning how foolish all my petty fantasies were, because I still _want the same thing_ and feel the same way as I have for years. No, no, no, I don't. I want more. Every moment I think of him I want more. I want too much to fit into three weeks. I don't know how it's possible to feel like this. And it's not just me, is it? I gauge that look on his face, the surprise and confusion and the burning curiosity, and do I dare, should I lean closer like _so_ and drape a thoughtless hand along his chair like _this_ and...

He jumps from his chair abruptly before I can touch him, grabbing a small log from the woodstack and casting it into the fire. Waste and damnation, it was burning fine already and I know for a fact he doesn't have to get out of his seat to tend to a fire. I curse myself twenty different ways as he turns away from me, legs curled under him on the edge of the hearthslab. It _seemed_ right - why wasn't it right? Why won't he let me?

He dares a glance back at me. I know this game by now. It's called _let's act like that never happened._ Easier, for both of us, than spending another week snubbing him until he comes crawling and lying his way back for more chances to frustrate me. He shrugs lightly. "Nevertheless, it seems I've been thoughtless."

"Please don't say that," I reassure him, equally lightly. "I should have told you sooner." I don't even realise it's true until after it's said - I never tell men I want to sleep with, but it was so damn easy to tell him the truth that I guess he's not one of those men -

\- but more than them.

And honesty and virtue are welcome to fuck each other in my empty bed.


End file.
